Fergie's Tech Blog

Telecom: Controlling Lasers with Chaos

Kate Greene writes on MIT's Technology Review:

Researchers believe that they have found a way to speed up traffic over existing telecommunications networks. Usually, random fluctuations, or noise, in an optical or electrical system is a bad thing, and engineers strive to eliminate such unpredictable behavior from electrical current and light. But now researchers have shown that a little bit of noise can actually enhance the output of some of these systems.

A collaboration between researchers from SUPELEC, in Metz, France, Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and the Public University of Navarra, Spain has resulted in controlling previously chaotic laser light, just by adding a small dose of noise to the electrical current that powers it.

posted by Fergie @ 7/05/2007 01:53:00 PM